Melingo in Israel has developed a text to speech program called Kolan
http://www.melingo.com/kolan_ab.htm because of the specific problems of
ambiguity (the omission vowels) and the rich morphology in semantic
languages this tool is excellent, claiming 97% correct vocalization. Right
now it's only in Hebrew but they intend to duplicate this program to Arabic
as well.
Jael
----- Original Message -----
From: "Patrick Burke" <burke@ucla.edu>
To: <w3c-wai-ig@w3.org>
Sent: Tuesday, June 24, 2003 1:10 AM
Subject: RE: what languages can screen readers read in?
>
> Again not terribly helpful for the original question, but a Google tangent
> led me to these pages:
>
> Compu-Arabica listserv:
> http://www.accesstechnologyinstitute.com/lists/topica/compuarabica.html
>
> (Discussing computer access for blind Arabic speakers. I'm not sure of the
> date on this one or if it is still accurate. According to a message on one
> of the Jaws listservs the Arabic screen reader Sakhr is priced at $3000.)
>
> UB Access - Hebrew and Arabic Accessibility
> http://www.ubaccess.com/hebrew-access.html
> (Info mainly on Hebrew accessible web markup, but explains difficulties
> screen readers will have with any language where vowels are inferred from
> context.)
>
> Patrick